The Esports World Cup (EWC) 2026 came to a close last week and saw substantial viewership across its 20+ tournaments.
There was also a huge shock as AG.AL claimed the $7m EWC Club Championship over Team Falcons.
Esports Charts has released viewership data, revealing the ups and downs from the tournament.
As it expected, Mobile Legends Bang Bang was once again the most-watched EWC event with 45.27m hours watched.
The Most-Popular Esports World Cup 2026 Tournaments
While many events increased in hours watched, many of those had also doubled in length with twice as many teams.
Counter-Strike 2 at EWC 2026 saw a huge 93.7% year-on-year increase in hours watched up to 27.92m up from last year’s 14.4m.
However, the event also doubled from 16 to 32 teams, which led to substantially more matches and the total airtime rising from 41 to 90.5 hours.
Meanwhile, the PUBG Mobile World Cup 2026 increased its hours watched by more than 71.5%, with dedicated promotional Facebook broadcasts providing a major additional source of viewership.
EWC 2026 was moved to Paris due to conflicts in the Middle East, and there was strong local intest in the League of Legends and Call of Duty tournaments.
But as for online audiences, only four tournaments surpassed one million Peak Viewers.
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As mentioned previously, the MLBB Mid Season Cup 2026 led the way with a peak audience of 2.89m, though this was down from last year’s 3m peak.
PUBGM then came in second with 1.79m concurrent viewers, making it the game’s highest peak audience in the last five years.
Then, LoL (1.48m) and CS2 (1.04m) complete the top four, recording their highest EWC peaks alongside Overwatch (246k), Call of Duty (272k), and Rocket League (305k).
And Free Fire recorded the game’s highest peak audience in the last four years 805k.
Meanwhile, Dota 2 and Valorant recorded notable viewership declines.
With three out of four Dota 2 semi-finalists coming from Russia, it’s believed regional viewership may have contributed to the MOBA’s lower viewership.
Meanwhile, Valorant was missing a lot of its popular teams, with Fnatic, Sentinels, and Gen.G Esports all failing to qualify and then both Karmine Corp and Paper Rex facing early exits in the Group Stages.
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Meanwhile, there are fears that Dota 2’s The International’s drastic prize pool drops are a bad sign for MOBAs. And for even more Insider Gaming delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.
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